There are collector cars and then there is the 1965 Ford GT40 MkI that Carroll Shelby personally drove and which appeared in movies while others competed on circuits. The same one that Mecum Auctions now put up for sale on January 16 in Kissimmee with an estimate of between 5 and 5.5 million euros. Chassis P/1018 is not just any GT40 because we are talking about one of the only two examples that Shelby himself drove in his day, so look, if you were looking for first division automotive pedigree, here it is served to you on a platter.
The history of this car begins in November 1965, when Ford Advanced Vehicles sent it directly to Shelby American as a show and demonstration car. Ford wanted to show off its GT40 program and needed something with presence for motor shows, so the P/1018 was built to racing specifications but was never intended to race in the first place. Shelby used it for photo shoots as soon as it arrived at the Los Angeles facilities, although the car arrived with some small damage to the nose due to transportation, and then he drove it on January 6, 1966 at the inauguration of a new section of the Santa Monica Freeway with Miss Santa Monica as co-driver. Come on, a normal day for a Texan icon who had become the visible face of the most ambitious program that Ford had ever set up.
When Ferrari said no to Henry Ford and created the one of the century
Ford tried to buy Ferrari in 1963 because Henry Ford II was tired of General Motors eating away at him in both sales and sporting prestige, so he thought that tying himself to Enzo Ferrari would be the master move to gain respectability at once. The negotiations progressed for months and in May 1963 they almost had the deal closed for about 14 million dollars at the time, but Enzo backed out at the last moment when he read the fine print of the contract and discovered that Ford wanted to control the budget of the Scuderia Ferrari and that meant that decisions about competition would be made by Detroit, not Maranello.
Ferrari asked something along the lines of “if I want to go to Indianapolis and you don’t want to, should we go or not?”, and when they answered “you don’t go”, the matter went to hell. Enzo was not willing to work for a corporation that would take away control of the only thing that really mattered to him, which was racing, and to top off the disagreement it seems that he also made some hurtful comments about Ford making ugly cars in ugly factories. Henry Ford II got so angry that he called his executives and engineers and told them verbatim that he wanted to go to Le Mans and beat Ferrari’s ass, although he used more colorful words.
The GT40 program was born directly from that humiliation, because Ford decided that if it couldn’t buy Italian glory it was going to rip it away from the circuit. The first attempts were an absolute disaster because in 1964 the GT40s did not finish a single race at Le Mans and Ferrari won comfortably, and in 1965 things improved little. Ford needed someone who really knew how to turn a fast car into a winner, so they signed Carroll Shelby because the Texan had already shown them with the Cobra Daytona Coupe that he knew what he was doing. Shelby found a lot of problems with the original GT40 and spent almost two years fixing them one by one until in 1966 Ford took eight GT40 MkIIs to Le Mans and they crossed the finish line in first, second and third position. Ferrari was humiliated and Ford took its revenge with interest.
From Hollywood to the classic tracks with champion honors
The P/1018 had a peculiar life because instead of being destroyed on circuits like most of its brothers, it became a movie star. MGM Studios rented it for Bob Bondurant to test mobile camera equipment during the filming of Grand Prix, and it later appeared in an episode of The Man From UNCLE, so this GT40 has seen more screen time than many B-movie actors. In between it toured auto shows up and down the American West Coast and was displayed at the 1967 High Performance and Custom Trade Show at Dodger Stadium, which would later evolve into the SEMA we know today.
Once its media career ended, the car passed through several illustrious owners who took it to compete in classic and veteran races. David Piper, Brian O’Neil and Ray Bellm, who was a three-time FIA World Endurance Champion in the Group C2 category, drove it in events such as the Le Mans Classic, Goodwood Revival and the Daytona Classic 24 Hours. The record of the P/1018 in classic competitions is impressive because it scored 11 victories out of 13 starts in Le Mans Classic, because in addition to being beautiful and with history, the car really pulls when you need to push.
Mecum describes the P/1018 as one of the literal billboards for the Shelby American program and the GT40 MkI, because this car was the one Ford used to introduce the model to the public in 1965. Mecum consignment director David Purvis says this is the most famous GT40 MkI in existence due to its combination of media appearances and veteran racing performance. The car comes with a nearly 300-page historical dossier compiled by Ronnie Spain, who is the reference historian for everything related to the GT40, so the next owner will also take all the documentation that demonstrates every detail of the car’s life.
One of 48 and with a 4.7 liter V8 that still works
Only 48 units of the GT40 MkI received the official designation of “racing coupés” and the P/1018 is one of them, although its initial specification was off display. The engine is a 289 cubic inch V8, equivalent to 4.7 liters, mated to a five-speed manual transmission that at the time allowed the car to reach speeds of over 320 km/h on the straights of Le Mans. Ford developed the MkII with a larger 427 cubic inch (7 liter) engine because the MkI fell short in raw power to beat the Ferraris, but the original MkI maintains a balance between performance and reliability that makes it especially attractive for classic competitions where consistency matters as much as top speed.
Mecum’s Kissimmee auction on January 16 included two more even more special GT40s, because there was a 1966 GT40 MkII Factory Lightweight that is one of only three built and is considered the most original to survive, and a 1969 GT40 MkIII that appears to be the last of 13 unfinished chassis that were completed. The MkII Factory Lightweight does not have a published price estimate, but it could easily exceed 50 million euros if we take into account that a white Ferrari 250 GTO from 1962 that was also auctioned that day looked like it would fetch between 45 and 65 million.
The P/1018 seems almost a bargain in comparison because its estimate of between 5 and 5.5 million euros puts it in a range accessible to serious collectors, but not necessarily stratospheric billionaires. A GT40 that Carroll Shelby personally drove, with appearances in Hollywood, victories in classic races and only 48 brothers in the world deserves every penny of that figure, because we are talking about a tangible piece of the time when Ford decided that if it couldn’t buy the Italian legend it was going to build it from scratch… and boy did it succeed.
